Burnout

Hi everyone, I really just need a safe space to vent and maybe hear from others who understand what it's like to feel totally alone.

The last six months have been the hardest of my life. I am currently experiencing homelessness and living out of my car. I made the move to get a fresh start, but the main reason I moved was to be closer to my family, especially my mom.

Before I moved, she told me she had a job and a place lined up for me. None of that happened; those plans completely fell through. Instead of helping me figure it out, she left me to sleep in my car.

To make matters worse, I rely on her for my employee hotel discount when I can afford to pay for a room. But she constantly puts it off until the very last minute, waiting until the hotel is completely booked out, which forces me back into my car. When I get anxious and keep asking her for updates ("Is it done yet?"), she gets upset with me. But if I don't ask, it simply doesn't happen.

We used to have such a close relationship and fun car rides together. Now, she barely speaks to me when we're in the car, and I have no one else to talk to or socialize with since I'm isolated out here. When I am in a severe mental health crisis and overwhelmed from living in my car, I eventually snapped on her once. Now, she treats me like an absolute burden, says I'm mentally abusing her, and blames me for moving out here in the first place, even though I came here for her.

I feel so placed on the back burner, like my safety and urgency don't matter at all, and I wish so badly that I didn't need her help or support. It hurts so much to feel like your own mother wants nothing to do with you.

If anyone has been through family betrayal, housing instability, or just knows how to cope with this deep kind of loneliness, I could really use a kind word or advice right now. Thanks for listening.

#MentalHealthSupport #MentalHealthAwareness #Loneliness #Burnout

I didn’t burn out overnight.

I pushed myself for too long.

I kept going even when I was tired. I convinced myself that I could handle one more thing, one more week, one more responsibility.

Until my body started telling me otherwise.

The exhaustion became physical. My body was carrying what my mind kept trying to ignore.

And that was probably the hardest part: realizing that I had spent so much time listening to what I should do that I had stopped listening to what I actually needed.

Burnout made me slow down.

Not because I wanted to, but because eventually I couldn't keep running.

I'm still recovering.

Some days I feel like myself again. Other days I realize how deeply exhausted I actually was.

I'm learning that rest isn't something I have to earn after I've done enough.

And maybe that's the biggest lesson burnout has given me:

You don't have to break completely before you're allowed to stop.

Sometimes your body whispers first.

Listen before it has to scream.

#MentalHealth #Anxiety #Depression #Burnout #OtherMentalHealth

I won't and can't elaborate much. I'll just say that although I'm suicidal and feeling like self harming, I won't do that so in that sense I'm safe. But today was the straw that broke the camel's back. I am in so much physical pain, so much eye pain, so much fatigue and the health system is failing me. I am so sick, I'd say, that taking a shower makes my body ache. I wish I had a shower bench but it's absurdly expensive. And I just broke. I'll end up sleeping I think, the fact I broke is making me really tired by typing that's why I'm not gonna elaborate much. And I am in so much emotional and physical pain that I'm not being able to try to eat something solid, and I only had breakfast today at like 7AM and it's almost 9PM here. So yay.

For a long time, I thought burnout was something that happened to other people.

The people working 80-hour weeks.

The entrepreneurs building businesses from scratch.

The doctors, the executives, the people carrying impossible responsibilities.

I never imagined it could happen to me.

After all, I wasn't working around the clock. I wasn't running a company. I wasn't saving lives.

I was just tired.

At least that's what I kept telling myself.

But burnout doesn't arrive all at once.

It doesn't knock on your door and announce itself.

It slowly moves in while you're busy surviving.

It starts with saying yes when you want to say no.

Taking on one more responsibility.

Answering emails outside working hours.

Skipping rest because there's always something more important to do.

Ignoring your body because everyone around you seems to be doing the same.

Until one day, you wake up and realize you're no longer tired from a long week.

You're tired from your entire life.

That's the part nobody talks about.

Burnout isn't always caused by work.

Sometimes it's the pressure of constantly holding everything together.

The mental load.

The overthinking.

The people-pleasing.

The emotional labor.

The feeling that if you stop for even a moment, everything might fall apart.

For me, burnout didn't look dramatic.

It looked like losing interest in things I once loved.

It looked like staring at my screen without being able to focus.

It looked like scrolling endlessly because my brain couldn't handle another decision.

It looked like feeling overwhelmed by simple tasks.

It looked like being exhausted after doing absolutely nothing.

And the hardest part?

The guilt.

The guilt of not being productive enough.

The guilt of resting.

The guilt of feeling ungrateful when, on paper, everything seemed fine.

So I pushed harder.

I tried to optimize my schedule.

Wake up earlier.

Be more disciplined.

Work on my mindset.

Drink more coffee.

Do more.

Fix myself.

But burnout isn't a productivity problem.

It's often a disconnection problem.

A disconnection from your body.

Your needs.

Your emotions.

Your limits.

Your joy.

The lesson I'm still learning is that rest is not something you earn.

It's something you need.

The world teaches us to celebrate people who keep going no matter what.

But sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop.

To pause.

To listen.

To admit that you're exhausted before your body forces you to.

These days, I'm trying to measure my life differently.

Not by how much I produce.

Not by how busy I am.

Not by how much I can carry.

But by how present I feel.

How peaceful I feel.

How connected I feel to myself.

Because burnout didn't happen when I started doing too much.

It happened when I stopped listening to myself.

And healing, I've realized, begins the moment you start listening again.

#Burnout #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Depression

Please tell me there are more people that have experienced this because I feel like I'm getting insane...

I'm anxiously attached, but living a good life with my boyfriend. 6,5 years relationship, dealing with my anxiety and other issues as well, so no great intimate life - but still happy together, buying a house, talking about the future and kids.

Then I got ill. Burnout - but the kind where both anxiety and physical issues were extreme. And later I got also diagnosed with long covid, ánd I got an ADHD diagnosis.

So it was hard, my boyfriend didn't really know how to cope, but I got better and better because I finally found a therapy that helped - until I had a total relapse due to circumstances. And then he lost faith. He was about to turn 30 when he told me he had serious doubts about our future, if I wouldn't relapse when we had kids, it didn't feel like a love relationship anymore.

My body completely spiraled. I asked him through a letter to either stay, find an emotional outlet, and be a team - or go, because the inbetween made my body feel like it was in mortal danger. He said he stayed.

But his words didn't match his actions. I became hypervigilant, which means completely focused on his mood, and in the meantime he got more depleted, more stressed, more injuries, sick more often, and didn't feel like doing stuff anymore. His words said yes but his body said no and without wanting it, my whole focus shifted from "wanting to get better" to "wanting to get better to not lose him". It was the only thing that drove me, literally. I tried everything I could to learn how to feel safe within myself but my nervous system refused.

And then 8 weeks ago he broke up with me. And I've never felt this awful. Dreadful. Terrified. Unsafe. Overwhelmed. With nothing to live for, because the only thing I lived for - our future together - is gone.

I don't know how to cope. I've learned so much in therapy but I'm só low that I cannot apply anything. After 8 weeks I still feel like I'm dying. Please tell me I'm not the only one dealing with something similar - and please tell me that it actually gets better.

Because I'm exhausted. I fought for my health, my mental state and my relationship every single day for 2,5 years. And it got me rock bottom.

#RockBottom #breakup #Hypervigilance #Anxiety #anxious #relationship #ChronicIllness #longcovid #Burnout #ADHD #illness #Burnout #lowselfesteem

I am
Scared of how depressed I feel. No im not g doing anything stupid. I’m just miserable.